* All of the base operating system components are open source. The Steam client itself is proprietary, as are some proprietary third party drivers.

* It also provides a desktop mode which can run regular Linux applications. SteamOS makes use of the standard APT package manager for software updates; you can add third-party sources to your subscribed repositories to gain access to more applications.

Some people were already proclaiming that Valve will lock everything down and make it as difficult to customize the installations as regular consoles generally do. Well, this luckily proves them wrong.

Some people were already proclaiming that Valve will lock everything down and make it as difficult to customize the installations as regular consoles generally do. Well, this luckily proves them wrong.

Yeah, I never bought into that argument - it doesn't make sense. How would locking things down help them in any way at all?

I mean sure, to an extent Steam Boxen will be competing with consoles (which are generally expected to be locked down), but their main competition, the one everyone is going to compare them to, is a custom built PC. If they cripple their platform in any substantial way, they are going to end up screwing their chances of it gaining traction.

On a different note, I wonder if the guys in Cupertino have realized how much this will benefit them in the long run? Every single game that gets ported to SteamOS is pretty much automatically going to get an OSX port. OSX and Linux, from the perspective of game development, are virtually identical.

I really do hope this catches on, if for no other reason than it might convince some of the bigger studios to develop for OpenGL first - anything that loosens the ActiveX stranglehold on PC gaming is a good thing...

I mean sure, to an extent Steam Boxen will be competing with consoles (which are generally expected to be locked down), but their main competition, the one everyone is going to compare them to, is a custom built PC. If they cripple their platform in any substantial way, they are going to end up screwing their chances of it gaining traction.

I don't think Valve is competing against custom built pc. Rather they are creating a platform where people can either go with a custom built pc or a pre-configured pc. SteamOS is not about making another competition in the industry but rather destroy the concept of competing hardware/console. Their main focus is the Steam store which is the platform they will use to generate revenue. The Steam Boxes themselves and the controller may yield small profits but the main attraction is the platform itself. If anything, this looks like Valve is employing a Blue Ocean strategy as they call it in Business.

Corporations are just groups of people and trusting corporations is approximately the same as trusting people. You may give them the benefit of the doubt or you may be skeptical in the beginning, but over time you begin to learn who is trustworthy and who isn't. If you trust the wrong ones or trust any of them to an unreasonable degree, you get burned and you need to re-evaluate your own judgement. It really isn't complicated.

The problem most people have is they place unrealistic expectations on corporations (and people) to act and behave a certain way and are burned when their expectations aren't met. They feel like their trust has been betrayed when, in reality, their trust was misplaced or unreasonable to begin with.